Are we all speaking the same English language? šŸ˜œšŸ˜

In GB, it’s the room with the shag carpeting.

Ah, then here is a useful English tea chart.

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I’ve been married to a Malaysia for 23 years. I still struggle with Manglish most of the time.

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Well even us Cockneys don’t use it quite the way people imagine. We’ll tend to use bit of it within standard English sentences. So I might say ā€œHello me old Chinaā€ meaning ā€œHello mateā€.
e.g. China Plate = Mate.

So even if you don’t understand the rhyming slang, you’d usually get the meaning. (I mean you would understand that Hello… meant hello).

In (my part of) of Canada, we mostly say ā€œwashroomā€ or ā€œbathroomā€ when we mean toilet. Saying ā€œtoiletā€ sounds too specific to us and less private. I suspect we want people to think we’re going in there for some other reason. LOL.

However, I’ve learned to specify toilet when I’m in Europe (in whatever language) and in the UK, I tend to say ā€œthe looā€ although I don’t actually know if that’s too informal for some places (like a restaurant/pub). Any Brits out there want to enlighten me?

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After leaving ā€˜home’ :wales: more than 40 years ago for :canada: I still sometimes struggle with the difference between :uk: + :us: + :canada: English. Someone yesterday asked me if I’d had beaver tails, and I vaguely remembered that they’re some type of dessert/pastry in Canada. :thinking: It took me a few minutes to understand though. :slightly_smiling_face: Today I came across this webpage and thought it might be helpful to others.

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I like builders tea I take my Scottish blend with me. My mother said about weak tea that’s water made worse!

Hi Debbie,
I spent many years in the army with men from the Tees area, the dialect they use is commonly called ā€œGeordieā€.
In the mid 80’s I was working in Israel on a Kibbutz and one evening I was discussing dialects with a Norwegian colleague over a beer or three and I gave her a Geordie phrase to mull over and see if she could work out what it meant.
ā€œGan Yem to see war lassā€. It didn’t take her very long because the word ā€œYEMā€ has the same meaning in Geordie and Norwegian, Home.
Makes me think that Geordie slang is a leftover from when the Norwegians invaded the Northeast of England, stayed and married the local girls all those century’s ago.
A similar movement of language you could use to compare and contrast might be the Cajun language.
Cajuns - Wikipedia

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Hi @crewman

Geordies are from Newcastle - beside the Tyne not the Tees. The river Tees is only a few miles north of my Native North Yorkshire. The river Tyne is a bit further north and the accent there is very different, and much faster. I’d agree that Geordie is one of the hardest accents in the UK to understand.

There’s definitely a lot of Viking words still used in North East England and Scotland. In York, many streets end in ā€œGateā€ from the Viking word for street. Coppergate, Spurriergate, Walmgate, Fossgate, Davygate, Jubbergate and of course Whip-ma-whop-ma-gate. I felt really at home in Reykyavik, Iceland where the streets also end in gate. In Scotland churches are Kirks - also the word for church in some Scandinavian countries. It makes complete sense that regional dialects in the North East would also contain some Viking.

In Iceland, a waterfall is a ā€œFossā€ e.g. Gullfoss. In Yorkshire (and possibly elsewhere in the North East) many of our waterfalls are called ā€œForceā€ e.g. Hardraw Force. This must originate from the Viking word. Meanwhile ā€œFossā€ is the name of York’s smaller river and means ā€œfast flowing riverā€ - it must have been at one time.

Language can be fascinating!

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Being Scottish

The Scottish language … :scotland:

Sharing from members who posted this on Twitter …
Any more contributions from North of the English border?

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Many moons ago, my husband ventured to Canada on his O.E. & was asking for directions when he heard the expression ā€˜kitty corner’. He was totally befuddled as he returned to ask for clarification as couldn’t see a pet store :sweat_smile::sweat_smile::sweat_smile:.

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Have You Been Pronouncing These 20 British Place Names Incorrectly?

I definitely use the term ā€œkitty cornerā€

What is a kitty corner?

Do Brits tend to grow up knowing the preferred pronunciation of these place names, or would they make as many errors as, say, a Yank would if they weren’t from the region of the place in question?

Kitty corner = diagonally opposite, typically in reference to buildings on two intersecting streets

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@BruceT As a Brit I can confirm that many of us who aren’t familiar with different regions pronounce things incorrectly and we also have regional differences, so southerners might pronounce a town differently to a northerner!

My confession is that I have said Ark-can-sas up until I travelled extensively in the US 10 years ago … I thought Ark-can-saw was a completely different place :roll_eyes: :joy: Apparently you have the French to thank for that one!

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Interesting. What’s the origin of kitty, rather than saying diagonally?

@Crookie , you can also say, catty corner, which is what I say— it means the same thing. Kitty, catty, I guess it has something to do with cats.

We wear thongs on our feet in Australia. I know Americans are often shocked by this as thongs are underwear to them. Thongs = flip flops or jandles to a Kiwi

I remember my cousin saying she shocked her new American friends when she moved to the USA and asked a new mother if she could ā€œnurseā€ the baby, which means holding the baby in Australia, not bre@st feeding it!

XXXX (pronouced four ex) is a very popular Australian beer and is definitely not an ex-rated product! It started life as three ex and ironically this forum system came up with an error message and would not let me post this comment when I typed X X X without the spaces!

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